[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S361-S363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DRUG-RELATED CHILD ABUSE
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, it is becoming difficult to open a
newspaper without reading another horrifying story of drug-related
child abuse.
From Brooklyn, we learn of Elisa Izquierdo, the 6-year-old girl who
was born to a crack addicted mother. Elisa's mother allegedly beat her
to death, leaving New York's public welfare agencies to engage in the
usual finger pointing. [New York Times, Nov. 28, 1995]
In suburban Chicago, a woman and two children are brutally murdered
by a trio that includes a convicted drug dealer high on crack. [Time,
Dec. 4, 1995].
In Patterson New Jersey, a crack-addicted woman beats her 14-year-old
daughter with a three-foot board with a nail protruding, after a
dispute over dirty dishes. [New York Times, Dec. 6]
To most of us, horrifying incidents like these seem nearly
unimaginable. They demonstrate the incredible dangers of drugs like
crack cocaine--drugs so addictive that they could actually impel a
mother to kill her own child.
These may be extreme cases, but they are instructive because they
represent the extreme end of the kind of pressures facing young people
today.
Indeed, sometimes it almost seems to me as if our culture is
dedicated to separating children from their innocence. A recent
Carnegie Foundation report put it this way:
Barely out of childhood, young people ages 10 to 14 are
today experiencing more freedom, autonomy, and choice than
ever at a time when they still need special nurturing,
protection, and guidance. Without the sustained involvement
of parents and other adults in safeguarding their welfare,
young adolescents are at risk of harming themselves and
others. [Report of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development.]
Lately, the harm referred to in the Carnegie report has been taking
the form of increased drug use. A few numbers tell the story:
Last year the number of 12- to-17 year-olds using marijuana
hit 2.9 million, almost double the 1992 level [National
Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Nov. 1995].
LSD use is way up among high-school seniors--11.7 percent
of the class of 1995 have tried it at least once. That is the
highest rate since recordkeeping started in 1975. [Monitoring
the Future Study, released Dec. 11, 1995]
A parents' group survey released this November found that 1
in 3 high school seniors now smoke marijuana [Survey released
Nov. 2, 1995 by Parents Resource Institute for Drug
Education].
Unbelievably, another survey shows that young people are
more likely to be aware of the health dangers of cigarettes
than of the dangers of marijuana [May 1995 survey by Frank
Luntz].
As I said, kids have it rough today. They are faced with adult
choices at an ever-earlier age, as the culture surrounds them with
hedonistic messages. And it bothers me, frankly, when I read that
sometimes our mass media, our educators, and our public officials are
making things even worse.
Take the recent advent of rap and hip hop music, a kind of music that
enjoys great popularity among young people. A lot of hip hop music is
perfectly unobjectionable, although I have to admit it is not what I
listen to.
But take a look at these lyrics by the hip hop group Total
Devastation and tell me if you hear what I hear--kids as young as 10
being encouraged to take drugs. Chart No. 1 reads:
When it comes to puffing blunts [blunts are a kind of
marijuana cigarette] I'm a 12-year vet.
And I wasn't 10 yet when I took my first hit.
I was headed out the house to school one day,
And guess what I found in my dad's ashtray . . .
Now there's only three things in life that I need
Money, safe sex, and a whole lot of weed. Total Devastation,
``Many Clouds of Smoke'']
If my colleagues believe that this is an isolated phenomenon, let me
quote from some other songs. This is ``Hits From the Bong,'' by the
group Cypress Hill. Chart No. 2 reads:
Pick it, pack it, fire it up,
Come along, take a hit from the bong. . . .
[Cypress Hill, Black Sunday, Hits From the Bong]
Of course, for those of you who have led sheltered lives, a bong is a
plastic pipe used for smoking marijuana. This is what our kids get hit
with every day.
This last chart has an excerpt from a No. 4 hit song by performers
known as ``Channel Live'' and ``KRS One''. Chart No. 3 reads:
Wake up in the mornin' got the yearning for herb
Which loosens up the nouns, metaphors and verbs
And adjectives ain't it magic, kid
What I'm kickin'
Multiflower bags and seeds for the pickin'. . . .
[Group: Channel Live and KRS One; Song: ``Mad Izm'']
This is not just talk, either. The author of this hit song told High
Times magazine: ``I love marijuana.'' ``Anything that gives a good
feeling the youth are going to gravitate towards. Period. Drugs are
part of the human experience.'' [High Times, May 1995, p. 66]
From Atlanta we get the Black Crowes, known for unfurling large
banners on stage emblazoned with a marijuana leaf and bearing the words
``Free Us.'' Crowes lead singer Chris Robinson explained to a reporter:
``Everybody in this band smokes weed. . . . We did 350 shows, smoked
every night, and never got busted.'' [Hartford Courant, Mar. 12, 1993]
If you think it is easy to do something about this stuff, think
again. Baltimore deejay Marcel Thornton lost his job after he stopped
playing songs like ``First of the Month,'' by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, a
song which according to the Washington Post talks about ``getting high
and selling crack to welfare recipients.'' [Washington Post, Dec. 2,
1995]
According to the Post, Thornton, who attended the Million Man March,
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got a call from a female listener pointing out the contradiction
between the ideals of the march and some of the lyrics he was playing--
coarse and sexually explicit lyrics that I would not repeat on the
Senate floor. Thornton agreed; now he is unemployed.
Some people claim that music reflects values but has no influence
over the way people really live. But how else to explain the following
story, reported in the December 18 Washington Post.
A homemade video shows a man sitting at a table packaging what
appears to be crack cocaine. His 4-year-old son sits next to him--also
packaging a crack-like substance. The father drinks from a bottle of
gin. The 4-year-old takes a drink. The father pulls a 9 mm pistol and
subdues an assailant. The 4-year-old pulls a pistol--it may have been a
toy, we do not know--and turns it on a younger sibling.
Why was this child being trained, for lack of a better word, to be a
predatory criminal? His father says they were making a rap music video.
Of course, there are two sides to every coin. America's music and
entertainment industry has brought us greater access to more kinds of
music than at any time in history. Music entertains us, but it also
edifies us. It has always been a source of great inspiration to me.
There is so much in what the music industry produces for kids that is
positive--even uplifting. And there are so many musicians out there who
have put forth antidrug and other positive messages for people.
I also speak as one who has been a big supporter of the music
industry. The digital performance rights bill that was recently signed
by the President, and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, are only
two of the more recent pieces of legislation that I have worked to
enact.
But the industry has to admit that it just is not helpful to be
peddling albums and artists whose music endorses this type of
completely self-destructive activity.
To those of you at Arista, Sony, Interscope, Capricorn and Columbia
Records, and the many others who produce and distribute these groups
and the ones like them, I ask: How can you sit by and look at 1.3 more
young people--that is more young people than 2 years ago--smoking
marijuana? How can you ignore a 200-percent increase in marijuana use
between 14- and 15-year-olds?
The recording industry has a positive role to play here, but I just
have to ask the people promoting these groups, do you not feel
irresponsible distributing this garbage?
The record industries are hardly the only sector of the entertainment
industry that is sending mixed messages. In an episode of the hit TV
show ``Roseanne,'' Roseanne and her husband find a stash of marijuana
in their daughter's room. After lecturing her boyfriend, whom they
initially suspect of buying the marijuana, they then as parents shut
themselves up in the bathroom and smoke it.
Now, that is one of the most popular shows on television. Why, I will
never know, but nevertheless it is. What can our kids get from stuff
like that? I, fortunately, missed this particular episode, but I
understand that the writers treated it like it was something funny--as
if the main characters in a top-rated show have no influence over our
mores and our attitudes. [``Roseanne'' show aired Oct. 5, 1993.]
Small wonder, then, that 67 percent of adults and 76 percent of kids
say that pop culture--TV, movies, magazines, and pop music--encourages
drug abuse. There may be no direct causality, but there is certainly
positive reinforcement of a truly negative message. [May 1995 survey by
Frank Luntz.]
It is not just the mass media, of course. Kids are getting the wrong
message from areas as diverse as the instructional materials they
receive in school, and even a new encyclopedia that glorifies drug use.
Schools all across this country hand out free copies of Scholastic
Update, a magazine geared to youthful readers. Here is what an issue of
Scholastic Update had to say about illegal drugs:
Marijuana is back and coming out of the closet. Stars smoke
it. Musicians . . . celebrate it. TV shows like Saturday
Night Live and Kids in the Hall depict it as harmless fun.
Marijuana fashion has grown into a $10 million industry. .
.'' [Buschbaum, Herbert, ``Legalizing Drugs: Where do you
Stand?'' Scholastic Update, May 6, 1994 pp. 8-11].
The article gushes that ``America's antidrug policy is getting a
fresh look'' with ``[a] small but increasing number of public figures *
* * calling for legalization of all drugs, not just marijuana,'' and
strongly suggests that the Government treat drug use as a ``health
problem,'' providing addicts with controlled access to cheap drugs and
clean needles.
Here is another example that surprised me. The 1995 edition of
Colliers Encyclopedia--the book our kids are going to be using to write
book reports in junior high and high school--tells us there is no
reason to worry about drug use because ``[t]he desire of human beings
to alter their state of consciousness is one of the few constants in
human history.''
The Colliers entry on ``Drugs, Prohibition of'' was written by noted
legalization proponent Ethan A. Nadlemann. Among other novel theories
Dr. Nadlemann advances in this entry are that most drug laws, including
those banning cocaine and opiates, have their historic origin in racism
and the desire to crack down on socialism and other forms of political
dissent and nonconformity.
What bull. I cannot believe that an organization like Colliers would
go to this person to tell us and to tell our kids what is right with
the world. This is the kind of material we are giving to our young
people to read in school. Imagine what they are reading in their free
time.
Keeping our kids off drugs is critical for all the obvious reasons--
plus one. Those who reach age 21 without using drugs almost never try
them later in life. Hard core drug abusers almost always start young
and almost invariably start by smoking marijuana. Let us emphasize this
point. Marijuana is not harmless.
According to the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University, 12- to 17-year-olds who use marijuana are 85 times are more
likely to graduate to cocaine than those who abstain from marijuana.
The conclusion is clear. Glamorizing drug use is just reckless,
whether it is through music, TV, magazine articles, educational
materials, or misguided Government policies.
Keeping kids away from drugs in the first place requires us to
stigmatize drug use--a conclusion confirmed by numerous surveys and one
that, unfortunately, explains our recent upturn in youthful marijuana
usage.
According to a University of Michigan study, youthful use began
rising in 1992, just 1 year after declines in peer disapproval were
first noted.
One organization that has been doing a great job in explaining the
dangers of illicit drugs is the Media Advertising Partnership for a
Drug Free America.
The Partnership brought us the famous frying egg with the voice-over
saying, ``This is your brain on drugs.'' They have come a long way
since the frying egg. Lately, they have been doing a terrific job of
producing ads that target all sorts of high-risk groups.
But they rely on donated air time--otherwise, a very expensive
commodity--to get their message out. This is becoming a problem for
this group. Partnership's ad placements are off more than 20 percent--
from $365 million in 1991 to a projected $290 million this year.
Partnership for a Drug Free America.
Network news coverage of the drug issue has fallen dramatically, from
518 stories in 1989 to just 82 in 1994. Center for Media and Public
Affairs.
We need to see more of these Partnership messages on TV, not fewer.
The media have to be more generous with their time and more proactive.
Unless we want a generation of junkies, more violence, more abuse and
neglect, and more crime on our streets, we had better stop singing and
laughing about drug abuse. It is a deadly serious matter.
I had one of the leading French law enforcement officials tell me how
difficult it is because Holland, a nation which has legalized drugs,
has become the sewer through which they are pouring in all the drugs
and then out to the rest of the neighboring states in Europe. It is
just devastating to the nations of Europe. We cannot let that happen
here.
All the recent news has not been bad. I am pleased that President
Clinton
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has responded to Congress' call for expedited nomination of a new drug
czar. Gen. Barry McCaffrey is an impressive nominee with a history of
courageous and energetic leadership. I am proud that he has been
nominated. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss these and other
issues with him before and at his confirmation hearings. I commend the
President for finally grabbing the ball and doing something in this
area.
I hope he will back General McCaffrey, who I do not think would take
this job if he was not going to have the backing of the President. I
hope the President will back him and help him to get out there and do
what needs to be done.
Mr. President, in the area of drug use, we have our work cut out for
us. The Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series of
hearings to bring national attention to bear on just how bad this
situation has become--and they are bipartisan hearings, I might add. We
are going to begin the process of revitalizing the drug war.
Over the next 2 months I will be joining with Senators Dole and
Grassley to look at specific approaches to dealing with the problem of
drug use. By working together I believe we will be able to reclaim the
ground that we have lost. But we cannot do it without people in America
being aware of these problems that are just killing our country and
killing our young people, and just satiating them with substances that
are horrifying, debilitating and wrong, and that will lead them down
the primrose path of drug abuse, drug addiction and ultimately death
and degradation.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, thank you. I just want to again thank my
colleague from Utah for his very eloquent remarks on the drug problem,
especially on marijuana. I say to my friend, I was listening, and he
points out some very good things. I, being the parent of two teenage
daughters, am as concerned as he is about the lyrics I hear on some of
these songs promoting the use of drugs, such as marijuana.
I cannot add to anything my friend from Utah said, except I heard him
say that hard-core drug users always start when they are young--and
that is true--and they usually start with something like marijuana.
Before that, they start on cigarettes. And unless and until we can get
to that root problem of doing something about how these cigarette
companies are pushing their products on young people we are fighting a
losing battle. We have to get to that too and stop them from getting
hooked on cigarettes, because it is cigarettes and alcohol and then
right on to illegal drugs.
So I thank the Senator.
Mr. HATCH. I want to thank my colleague. I appreciate the kind
remarks and hear him.
Mr. HARKIN. The Senator has been a great leader on this issue, and I
commend him for it.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator yield?
Mr. HATCH. I will be happy to do so.
Mr. LOTT. I wish to commend him for his remarks. I find them very
interesting and informative. I think we can all make use of them.
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